


First Storm of the Season

by dustandroses



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Africa Fic, Baby Slayer, Community: tamingthemuse, Female Character of Color, Gen, OFC - Freeform, Original Character - Character of Color, Original Character - Freeform, Original Female Character - Freeform, Post-Chosen, Post-Chosen Fic, Young Slayer, gen - Freeform, genfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 16:49:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustandroses/pseuds/dustandroses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander spends some time with a young slayer, and reminds himself of a few home truths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Storm of the Season

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompt Notes:** Inspiration for this chapter taken from the Live Journal community Tamingthemuse prompt #370: Storm  
>  **Notes:** Well, I wrote 922 words of this story yesterday, and thought I was about through with it. Seems I was wrong. I wrote just as much, again today. But it's a better story than it was yesterday. IMO, of course. *g*  
>  I spent a good amount of time researching Africa over the last week or two. It seemed a shame not to put all that hard work to use...

When Xander got to Kenya, the dry season still had most of a month left to it, and Xander had high hopes that he’d be off to the Nairobi airport with a new slayer for Buffy and Giles to train way before the rainy season hit. After that, he’d head wherever he was needed next. He’d been in Africa for over ten months at that point, and the worst of the shell-shocked horror of what he saw nearly every day was buried so deep that you’d hardly know it was there. It never went away; he had a feeling it never would, but there were times when it didn’t hurt as much. Like right now. Xander was dealing better with the Maasai, or at least the ones in this settlement.

Despite their appalling food habits - and may he just make it clear that he had no problem with cow’s milk or any of its descendants, like cheese, butter, ice cream, or even yogurt, as long as it was frozen. But he’d had far too many years of acquaintance with demons with a taste for animal’s blood to have any interest in seeing anyone drinking the stuff. As far as Xander was concerned, under no circumstances should cow’s blood ever be considered part of _any_ human’s diet. Under. No. Circumstances. 

And don’t even get him started on blood pudding, which is British food, if you could call it that, and had nothing to do with pudding, at all. He reminded himself, once again, to never order a traditional cooked breakfast while in England. It wasn’t a pretty sight. 

At least the people he stayed with here were, for once, not on the verge of starving to death, or ripe with disease. The Kenyan government had tricked the Maasai out of, and outright stolen, much of their fertile grazing areas, and with a much smaller amount of land to raise their cattle on, they’d been unable to continue their semi-nomadic lifestyle. This, of course, led to overgrazing. Their cattle starved, and that meant the Maasai suffered from malnutrition and hunger.

But they were a proud people, and resourceful. Many of the boys in training to be warriors would once have been busy with the normal tasks for those their age, like building walls of thorny acacia into kraals to protect their settlements from wildlife, patrolling their lands, raiding their non-Maasai neighbor’s cattle, and killing lions. Instead, these days they made their way into the cities where they could make money working as guards. Nobody could guard you better than a fierce Maasai warrior. 

They came home in style and _bought_ the cattle they’d had nothing to barter for, and were no longer allowed to steal. They’d be considered wealthy, because to the Maasai, wealth meant many cattle, and many children, and the only way to get wives was with a bride price, which was usually paid in cattle. So while the Maasai were still hungry and struggling to keep their old ways alive, they fared better than a number of the poorer people he’d seen in Africa.

That was part of Xander’s current problem. Nalutuesha’s family wasn’t starving, and her father wasn’t willing to allow his eldest daughter to leave home to free up more food for the rest of the family, as was often the case with the girls he found. She had duties to attend to – her mother was pregnant again, and Nalu had to be there to care for the younger children, and run the household until her mother gave birth. She’d been due any day, but Nalu wouldn’t be free until her mother could take over her duties to the family.

That meant Xander had to hunker down and live in the inkajijik with the family, and begin Nalutuesha’s Slayer education. All the elder’s children went to school, and since Kenya had once been a part of the British Empire, school was taught in both Swahili and English. Xander was relieved. His Swahili could definitely use some work. Okay, he was man enough to admit that his Swahili sucked. It was much easier to communicate when the baby Slayers, and their families, knew some English.

Luckily, all the elder’s wives had their own homes, so Xander didn’t see much of the man. He did, however, take the time to remind Xander that if he had to lose his daughter to the outside world, he expected a bride price. While it was possible that Nalu would come home after her training, her father said he was certain that she’d be spoiled as a bride. 

He didn’t mean that she’d be promiscuous or anything, he meant that no man would want to marry her if she was off fighting vampires and demons every night. Besides, she was already stronger, and by the time she was done training, she’d be a better warrior than her future husband, and that wouldn’t go over well in a people as patriarchal as the Maasai. Xander wanted to growl at Willow for teaching him to use a word like patriarchal, but even more, he wanted to remind Nalu’s father that she was already spoiled for that; the warriors were extremely annoyed at her habit of defending the settlement _before_ the men could get there to save the day. 

It wouldn’t help though. It might even make him hostile enough to refuse to let her go. And Xander hated the thought of her stuck here, miserable and misunderstood. So he didn’t say anything, and Nalu relaxed and smiled shyly at him. He felt proud that he could put a smile on her face. She didn’t smile often enough, in his opinion. 

As one of the few perks of his job, Xander got to be the first to introduce the more isolated new girls to the wonders of the outside world. It was sometimes scary, and occasionally disorienting, but these girls had dreams that took them past the edges of their homelands, and into the big, wide world, and they faced their challenges head on. Girl power. Incredible stuff.

Xander had gotten so caught up in his work that he was taken by surprise by the first strong thunderstorm of the season. Yeah, he knew they were heading into the rainy season, but for some reason, he hadn’t expected the first storm to be so overpoweringly… _powerful_. He crouched just inside the door of the hut, adjusted his eyepatch, and watched the rain turn the dirt outside into a sea of mud. 

Nalu’s bag was already packed, even though they weren’t leaving for another week, and Xander was tempted to grab her and make a run for it, before the ground soaked up all that rain and turned into mush that would be impossible for his jeep’s wheels to traverse. As if summoned by the power of Xander’s brain, Nalu showed up, and stood under the narrow ledge outside the door with her new brother in her arms, and propped him up enough to show him the rain.

“I was born during the first storm of the season. That’s why they named me Nalutuesha – it means born during the rain. I wish Lemayian had been born this week instead of last. I don’t think I’ll have any children of my own. It would have been good to have that memory.”

“Your brothers and sisters will remember you as the brave one who saved their lives more than once from dangerous predators from the reserve. Maybe one of them will name a child after you.”

Nalu shrugged as if it didn’t really matter, chin held high in defiance. Xander wasn’t fooled.

“And who knows, maybe you’ll meet a guy in England whose pride won’t be all tied up in the fact that his wife is stronger than he is.”

“You think so?” She didn’t sound too convinced.

Thunder rumbled loudly in the distance, and this time it was Xander who shrugged. “It could happen.”

She smiled again. This time he was fairly certain she thought he was lying, but he got the idea she didn’t mind too much. 

“Do you think the rains will cause trouble for us driving back to Nairobi?”

“No,” Nalu said. “This early, the storms are short. This one will be gone in an hour or two.”

“Good. I’d hate it if you had to push the jeep all the way to the highway,” Xander teased.

She laughed out loud, and Xander looked up in surprise. He’d been there most of a month, and he’d never heard her laugh in all that time.

“I am not an ox.” She pointed her finger at him, the way he’d seen her mother do, when she warned Nalu’s brothers to stop fighting as they wrestled in front of the hut. “I refuse to pull you out of the mud.” 

Xander sighed dramatically at her, and she relented. 

“Don’t worry; the ground will soak up all the rain it can get. We’ll be gone long before the floods start.”

Her mother called her, and she ducked as she went back inside the low hut. She might be only twelve, but she was already nearly as tall as Xander. She’d be striking as an adult, with her long legs, strong face, and the grace of a slayer, and he didn’t mean that in the fighting sense of the word. Maybe she’d fall in love with a Watcher, and they’d have lots of Watcher babies for her to take care of. She needed to be needed; he’d seen that from the beginning. He hated to take her from her family, but he knew that she’d be happier in the long run if she got a chance to stretch her Slayer wings and realize her potential.

He stayed in the doorway for a while, listening to the thunder and staring at the sheets of rain that pounded the earth. During the dry season, he’d come close to pleading with Mother Nature to hurry the rainy season along, but now that it was here, he regretted it. It would make traveling much more difficult. 

Despite the dark rumbles of thunder and bright flashes of lightning, a group of boys played in the rain, laughing and charging at each other some complicated game of catch. He smiled as he watched them. He’d seen some horrific sights since he’d been in Africa - war-torn countries, and rebel troops kidnapping children and forcing them to carry rifles, and babies crying in the dust, their dead mother’s blood drying on their sticky hands. But for every terrible sight, there was one like this, full of innocent laughter, and hope for the future, or the sight of a girl laughing at the mostly clueless white guy who’d been sent to find her, and bring her back to the people who’d understand what she’d been through. 

Life went on. That was the lesson the rains taught. Tomorrow, there would be new life all around him as the hardiest of the plants that had been hiding away from the dry weather bloomed, taking advantage of every drop of water that had fallen. That was what he had to remember. No matter what else happened, life always went on.


End file.
